With the help of a DI reader who wishes to remain anonymous, I have created the following Declaration for modern Americans to wake up from their delusions. I'd recommend that all adults and school children put their hands over their hearts in the morning and say the following instead of pledging allegiance to the powers-that-be (but see here for an alternate form of the Pledge).
Glenn Greenwald's comments regarding the vague terms that control our public policy provoked me to revisit the extremely vague term, "free market." “Free market” is a prime example of a vague term that is used for formulating anti-public policy. It is routinely suggested by our alleged leaders that “free market” refers to the freedom to choose where to spend one’s money. On a day to day basis, this idea seems reasonable. It evokes the image of people selecting fruits and vegetables at an open-air produce market. Modern "free market” policies extend far beyond individual buying decisions, however. In practice, government policies favoring the “free market” prohibit government from “freely” governing. “Free market” policies allow those with large amounts of money to usurp government policy. Policies that favor a wide-open "free market" take political power from ordinary citizens and hand that power to govern to large private for-profit corporations and wealthy individuals. “Free market” is a clever phrase for those who want an economic market that amounts to a baseball game without umpires, a market where corporations “freely” monopolize entire industries by scooping up the competitors, immunizing themselves from liability by buying favorable new laws, jacking up the prices and then giving the consumers the “freedom” to buy from among limited high-priced options. Modern "free market" policies give financially powerful entities the "freedom" to operate free of any government oversight, and the "freedom" to tell consumers to take-it-or-leave-it. [More . . . ]
Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" is illustrated in this short video. The idea is that political leaders often take advantage of natural and manufactured crises--which cause many folks to become infantilized in response to the trauma--to ram through unpopular policies, quite often "free market" initiatives. Klein's idea has intrigued many, but also received mixed reviews from economists.
Annie Leonard, well known for her "Story of Stuff" video, has now released her latest video, "The Story of Broke."
“Corporations are not ‘people.’ I’ll believe corporations are ‘people’ when Texas and Georgia execute the next corporation…”
Robert Reich (Reference: 6:00 on the above video) Billionaire hedge fund operator Raj Rajaratnam was sentenced recently to 11 years for insider trading in a Manhattan federal court. Mr. Rajaratnam was convicted by a jury of 14 counts of insider trading for illegally conspiring to obtain and using insider information from individuals at Goldman Sachs, among others. Prosecutors argued that Rajaratnam made over $74 million from his scheme. While some might praise the effort to convict Mr. Rajaratnam, how did the folks who he bribed or whatever fare? Why does the name Goldman Sachs keep coming up in all the Wall Street scandals? Did the government get anything from Goldman Sachs or any other bailout recipients for the money used to keep these operations alive? Just what the hell is Goldman Sachs still doing in any investment banking business at all? Goldman Sachs and 3 other banks are still trading in the risky derivatives which brought down the financial markets in 2008. Goldman and the other 3 banks hold some 95% of those contracts. [More . . . ]